How Now Shall We Live, by Chuck Colson.

This is the 7th Sunday of Ordinary Time and the last one before the season of Lent.

This week's reading : [Isaiah 43: 18-19, 21-22, 24b-25] [2 Corinthians 1, 18-22] [Mark 2, 1-12]

This week, I would like to share this interesting article that I read from - How Now Shall We Live, by Chuck Colson.

Chuck Colson recounts the story of Kim Phuc in his book How Now Shall We Live. You may remember seeing a picture of Kim in her Vietnam village which had just been bombed with napalm. With arms outstretched, and all her clothing burned off, she was photographed running in terror and pain. She would have simply become another casualty of Vietnam had the photographer not poured water on her burns and demanded that she be taken to a more modern hospital in Saigon where she could be treated. Though some in the hospital considered her as good as dead and considered her a lost cause, a Christian doctor insisted and persisted until she received treatment. Some fourteen months and seventeen surgeries later Kim was released.

She, and her scars, were periodically paraded before cameras and used by her government as a visual aid to illustrate American aggression. Without a friend, Kim experienced extreme depression and loneliness. She discovered that her gods could not erase the heart anguish caused by her experience and disfigurement. Through a series of events and answers to prayer God provided a girl friend who was able to introduce Kim to Jesus. Kim’s testimony is, “It was the fire of the bombs that burned my body, it was the skill of the doctor that mended my skin, but it took the power of God to heal my heart.”*

In 1996 at the Vietnam Wall of Remembrance, on Veteran’s Day, Kim spoke to veterans and their family sharing how the love of Christ had transformed her life. She mentioned that if she were to meet the man who dropped the napalm bomb, that Christ’s transforming love would enable her to love and forgive him. From the audience a man quietly slipped up to the security guards and handed them a note, which read, “I am the man you are looking for.” Kim agreed to meet with him. As he approached Kim, she extended her arms once again, this time not in terror but in forgiveness. She hugged the man as he sobbed, “I am sorry, so sorry.” Kim responded, “It’s okay. I forgive, I forgive.”

Like in this Sunday’s readings, the photographer, the doctor, and the girl friend, all, so to speak, were involved lowering Kim to receive healing. Some participated by very physical acts of caring and healing while others participated by showing spiritual acts of caring and healing by taking time to demonstrate Christ’s love and point her to him. Kim in turn became a living icon of Jesus’ love and forgiveness giving freely of that which she received.

For many their outward appearance does not reflect physical scars, for they appear robust and healthy, however, often their inner self is wounded and racked with self doubt, feelings of being unloved, and anxiety and guilt for failing to meet even their own standards of righteousness. Like this pilot, even in the midst of doing our job, we can experience unrelenting feelings of condemnation, which if unresolved result in soul sickness. God never intends for us to live under this cloud of guilt and judgment. Jesus came to set us free and is readily available to heal and forgive. But he is counting on us, who know him, and who know how to access him, to remove the hindrances people encounter, and to hold on to the ropes of compassion and involvement and assist people in reaching him. And equally important he is counting on us to extend our hearts and hands, saying, “It’s okay. I forgive, I forgive.”

What strike me hard was Kim’s testimony : “It was the fire of the bombs that burned my body, it was the skill of the doctor that mended my skin, but it took the power of God to heal my heart.”